Every Day Heroes

According to a 2016 Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM.org) article, people seek jobs they are passionate about doing and organizations that recognize its staff. Employee recognition programs are a great way to incentivize creative staff and encourage friendly competition among peers as a way to invest in the organization’s future. While there are some great opportunities with various recognition programs, sometimes some of our greatest assets- everyday heroes may never get a proverbial “shout out” about their contributions because their efforts often go unnoticed. Or, all too often the same people get recognized year in and year out which may generate a “in group/out group” type of culture.

What is an “Every Day Hero?”  Every Day Heroes are employees or other staff who go to great lengths to innovate programs, reduce financial challenges in their organizations’ budgets, serve as office admin and support staff, manage contracts with exemplary fiscal responsibility in mind, make sure you have the technology and tools to get the job done or simply step up to the plate to volunteer to take on a new project at work despite having a full load of priorities.

These people are also known as “individual contributors” who rally the team to exceed expectations and may never ask for a thank you in return because of an altruistic approach to their work.  Moreover, they never brag about their contributions because that is not their style. Every Day Heroes often jump into the fray, give it their all to support the team and move on. And yes, they sometimes fall under the radar when it comes to awards programs because they are selfless and fearless.

How do you make the effort to acknowledge the majority of every day heroes? The book “First, Break All of the Rules” by Markus Buckingham and Curt Coffman suggests that good leaders create an environment that recognizes and rewards them. Consider using the tips below to get started.

5 tips to Recognize Everyday Heroes:

1. Create a work culture that takes the time to say thank you to Every Day Heroes in creative, social and public ways.
2. Encourage leaders to walk and talk with staff across the agency to learn more about individuals’ contributions to the organization’s success.
3. Recognize every day heroes in public forums such as town hall meetings, on social networks and in executive messages.
4. Remember to say thank you to staff that do extraordinary work daily.
5. Personalize the recognition. One of my favorite bosses in the federal sphere held staff meetings once a quarter and gave his team “everyday hero” awards based on their interests. He gave things like gift cards based on staff's specific interests, movie tickets and wrote personal letters of commendation.

Who are the Every Day Heroes in your organization? Give them a GovLoop "Shout Out" for their accomplishments.

Changing Our Perception of the word Strategy

Changing Our Perception of the word Strategy

Winston Churchill once said “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Once upon a time, employees implemented strategies that were supposedly focused on the organizations overarching goals. Some of these divine plans may have been made in a vacuum with little or no input from team players. Others were probably the results of creativity and innovation on the part of aspiring staff attempting to effect positive change.

When some mentions the word strategy it creates one of two types of responses: dread or excitement for a new opportunity. Either way, the way we approach strategies today continues to evolve over time. For example, some may approach the development of a strategy by looking a lessons learned and then building upon an antiquated foundation. In this tech focused age, it is imperative that unique as well as new approaches to solving organizational challenges be made. This may require a new vision that acknowledges best practices, but does not solely rely on them to move the organization’s mission forward.

Some people dread the need to create strategies because it is perceived as a mountain of work that may not provide the highly valued metrics we all crave, especially during employee evaluation time. This is an opportunity to “right-size” your perception regarding the development of a strategy. This includes leveraging the S.M.A.R.T. goals principle to enhance your project approach. SMART stands for:

•   Specific: target a specific area for improvement.

•   Measurable: quantify, or at least suggest, an indicator of progress.

•   Achievable: ensure you have the team, time and tools to get the work done

•   Realistic: state what results can realistically be achieved given available

resources.

•   Time-bound: identify when the result can be achieved.

Also, don’t forget the creative aspect of strategies. When presented with a work challenge, take time out to consider all of the possibilities, not just the ones management asked you to consider. It may be a struggle at first to consider the possibilities outside the original goal. However, once you try this approach, you can envision the bigger picture when it comes to creating and implementing a plan focused on measurable results. There are creative tools such as unstructured brainstorming sessions, mind maps and more than can help generate innovative approaches to strategic planning endeavors.

Take time to identify ways to measure your results. For example, will you use an online tool, manual assessment or simply rely on a third party to generate the data for you? Either way, you need to assess your progress as well as determine how to overcome barriers to the plan’s success. Moreover, be willing to take a necessary step back to determine if the process is stagnating efforts or moving the organization forward.

Lastly, there are other benefits to learning how to evolve the approach to developing strategies. Once you learn how to make an effective plan, you can then mirror that effort to design strategies for your professional goals. I had a former director who once told me that if I have plans, I should write them down in order to achieve them. She said is it the start of creating a career oriented strategy that will set the foundation for my career. And she was right.

Finding Your Voice at Work

Steve Jobs once said “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice.” The public and private sectors are filled with people who seek opportunities to innovate programs, reinvigorate team goals and design award winning systems to bring their organization closer to the leading edge of their market share, but rarely get the chance to share their concepts.

Often, when the cool projects or big ideas are set in motion only the chosen few staffers are selected to participate in groundbreaking achievements. This may leave out people who may have great ideas. After a while, this becomes an office culture mentality. Yet that may be changed when we start to “right-size” our thinking. This also includes opening up the door to the quiet few in your team so they can actively engage and participate in work discussions. We need to remember that the loudest voice in a meeting is not the only contributor to the group’s advancement.

So what happens when employees are not afforded the forum to share their wisdom? They tend to feel disconnected from the team, exhibit symptoms of low morale and disenchantment with their workplace.

Don’t get me wrong, there will always be the “Team A” players who leadership regularly picks to head up the highly visible projects. There will also be members of the team who will try crack that glass ceiling so their ideas can be heard by leadership and other employees. So how does one balance the scale? Consider using some of the tips below to encourage your staff to find and use their voice.    

7 Ways to Encourage Employee Autonomy:

1.     Bring enthusiasm back into the work place. Challenge your employees to come up with great ideas and strategies to advance the organization’s mission.

2.     Host a creativity session to identify new opportunities for the staff to lead instead of regular staff meetings to discuss predictable business topics.

3.     Move your innovation meetings outside of the office and in to an area that is conducive to creativity.

4.     Encourage employees who rarely have an opportunity to speak up during meetings to contribute to the agenda items and lead discussions regarding their passion projects.

5.     Remind the “stage hog” employees who drone on in meetings about their personal success to be brief so that other team members may have the chance to voice their opinions.

6.     Remind your team there are no bad ideas. Consequently, when you make the office a safe space to be different so employees will generate new then more employees will speak up.

7.      Reward your staff for making an effort. This does not always mean they want money or time off, however nice it may be to receive such recognition. Heartfelt, genuine gratitude in the office goes a long way for making dedicated employees feel appreciated.

To Boldly Go Where No Business Communicator Has Gone Before

Business communicators are often called upon to generate multiple and diverse communications products under recurring deadline pressures.  Everything from leadership speeches, organizational announcements to media messaging are created and vetted leveraging a target-audience focus. Sometimes there is a need to break from routine and innovate how we create effective communications products for the various publics we serve.

For example, everyone wants to create awesome PowerPoint Presentations that have the usual three-pronged approach: text, image and slide transition., then repeat. This has been a traditional way of communication copious amounts of information across vast audiences. It can also become a bit of a message overload when too much text is added to the slides and then gets in the way of actually conveying an effective message.   Try some of the tips below to boldly take your business communications where no communicator has gone before.

Business Communicator Toolkit:

•  Let go of the words and use precise text in your presentations

o  This includes limiting the text so people understand the message

•           Use the right visuals

o   Check your images to ensure they directly correlate with the text and do not contradict the topic you are discussing

•         Infographics are your data’s best friend

o   Some free, secure, online infographic tools may help communicate data rich, complex messages into readily digestible information that is user-friendly

•         Change your tech

o   Try free, online presentation tools that are web-based, secure, mobile and provide fluid transitions from one topic to the next. An example of this is a tool like Prezi.

•         Reduce your presentation slides by half

o   Do you really need 50 slides to promote a new program, opportunity or etc. to your audience? Chances are they can gain the information they need in maybe 10 slides or less. Your goal is to give them a presentation they need and not use your presentation as a backup speech transcript.